Perils and Problems with Preaching

There comes a time in every Christian’s life when they get bored with listening to sermons on Sundays. Can we all admit it? Preaching is the central focus of a Sunday service in just about every evangelical church, but inevitably many of the attendants are going to get bored.

Many churches come up with new ways to circumvent this problem. They might update with some nice power point. They could even euphemize “sermon” with “conversation.” Maybe the preacher needs to dress down a bit and put more clever stories in his sermons –err conversations. We can even remove pulpits. We can shorten their length. There are so many things we can do –even sermon notes!- in order to keep the congregation engaged in what the Holy Spirit has to say to them.

But what if none these are really solutions? What if the problem is not with the manner of preaching, but the fact that preaching is central to the sunday worship to begin with? What if the expectation that you go to church, sing songs, and then “tune in” to “the man of God who gives you the word of God” is the problem? None of these the adjustments above would seem to offer a solution.

I realize that many people reading this can’t imagine going to “church” and not expecting the pastor’s sermon to take up most of their time. Sitting reverently during a “conversation” is part of Sunday worship. To do otherwise might seem to fail to make God’s Word important.

It is for all those out there that I write this blog. Please bear with me a bit. Sure, what I’m writing is not going to be popular, but I think if you read it you’ll see that I am not completely mad.

Making preaching the center of the service can create problems. Not all the problems I list are inevitable, but I believe that they pop-up more often than is easily seen. With an iconoclast’s hammer in hand, here I go:

Making preaching central can reduce the communication of God’s truth to verbal mediums only. Of all the reasons I could list, this is probably the most abstract so let’s get it out of the way. Not all communication is verbal. Not all communication uses words. Preaching reduces our worship and learning to what we do with our ears and one person’s voice. The other senses of touch, sight, and smell are ignored.

In older high church traditions, the senses of hearing, sight, smell, and touch are used in concert with each other. In a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church I attended the central visual focus of the church was stained glass image of Christ the King. The pastor stood off to the side when he preached a short homily, not a grandiose sermon. The senses of touch took place through the partaking of the Eucharist, which was preceded by prayer and singing, not an explanatory sermon.

Thus the worship and learning was not through words alone, but through other senses and experiences.

Making preaching central can give an inordinate amount of authority to the pastor. Ignoring other mediums of communication doesn’t mean that something is not communicated through them. Consider what is visually center. Often the pastor stands on an elevated platform above a crowd that is sitting. All eyes are on him. He might have a pulpit or not, but that makes no difference –especially when the pulpit is replaced with a spotlight. The most reverent Christians are the ones passionately taking notes. This lasts, in many cases, for the majority of the Sunday service. It goes on week after week, year after year.

All this communicates that this man talking, is not only a special, specific, role, but that he is to be followed and to be obeyed. This is a bit autocratic, no matter how benign the leader maybe. It is also incredibly ironic that a single person becomes the center of attention for the greater glory of God. Are we not able to look to God directly? Do we follow Apollos?

There is also a problem with a commitment to have the Bible as the authority. Most people in the pews do not have the time, the resources, or sometimes even the will to learn how to study scripture (and I can add that neither do many ministers!), thus the job of interpretation falls to one person. Eventually, what the pastor says gets conflated with what the Bible says. (Admittedly, there is always an interpretation of some kind going on when we read the Bible.) Still, when the pastor’s sermon and the Bible get conflated, it produces a kind of dogmatism. Questioning the pastor becomes the equivalent of questioning the Bible. This is too much influence in one guys hands.

Making preaching central can create a “cult-of-personality” or outright sacredotalism. It should go without saying that there is a problem when a well-known minister receives celebrity treatment when he walks into a room or attends a conference. Again, this pastor becomes the center of attention for the Glory of God. What is even worse is when it turns into sacredotalism.

Sacradotalism is a ten dollar word that is lost in evangelical vocabulary, but it is alive and well in practice. It means that there are two types of Christians; the lay Christians and the really spiritual ones. Sacradotalism means that there is a “man of God who delivers the Word of God” to the lay people. That one person has the role of being extra holy and has an almost exclusive access to the Holy Spirit. He delivers it to the congregation through his presence and speaking –with the appropriate humility of course. In some circles, the pastor may even declare himself the anointed man of God who is accountable only to God. (I recommend running from such people.)

People sometimes shrug and ask what the problem is. There are two. First, this creates problem with the congregation. Now, not only is authority of the pastor conflated with scripture, but pastor can become proverbial prophets who can be no more questioned than the Apostles. As bad as this is, it is only a small problem compared to what it can do to a pastor.

Exactly how holy is holy enough for the “man of God who delivers the word of God”? I think very few people can appreciate the kind of pressure it takes to be “extra holy.” Pastors often talk about how they need to watch their own moral and spiritual lives for sake of their congregation. The problem is you can never be holy enough. The external pressure of a spiritual perfectionism can be crushing. A pastor cannot pray enough, fast enough, avoid sin enough and such if his condition so dramatically determines how much of the Holy Spirit gets to his flock. One has to wonder if pressure like this paves the way for downfall through hidden escapisms. Ted Haggard anyone?

It is not that I don’t like a good message and a good sermon, and I don't think they should be abolished. In fact, my wonderful iPod has kept me busy as I have downloaded various messages from ministers all over the country. Neither am I saying that I think that all these problems will happen every time, in every church, on every Sunday. I am saying that the problems are there, and I think for the most part unadressed because they are unknown. As long as preaching central to sunday worship, problems like these will eventually come up somehow.

And I can never get over the subtle irony that worshiping god Sundays means (in part) sitting down, passively, while focusing on someone other than God for forty-five minutes.

Unto us a Child is Politically Incorrect

I hadn't expected to do another blog on Christmas, but as often happens I got inspiration. This time it came from a wonderful blog called Say Hello to My Little Friend. This audio is timely and funny. Really funny. So enjoy it. It is a story of all the Birth of Christ and the various nonsensical reactions to it from the secular world.

There is one thing I would like to comment on. At one point in the various people who come to Mary with grievances, one lady has this to say:

Religious holidays are important, but can't we learn to celebrate them in ways that unite, not divide? For instance, instead of all this business about 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,' why not just 'Season's Greetings'?"

This quote so wonderfully sums up how much of our culture views the holiday. I am sure that many of Christian peers reading this that are already annoyed with it. I am too. Yet I thought I'd post a few things why. I don't doubt that we call list of plenty of things that we think motivate this seemingly pious approach to a holiday. I'll offer two, and I invite everyone to add their thoughts in the comments.

First, I think there is an idea of "neutrality" towards religion as kind of a virtue in and of itself. It is this: we like the idea of our government being "neutral" towards religion. I am sure most Christians like that too. The problem is when people think that because the government is "neutral" towards religion, the rest of society should be too. If people start asserting their own religious communities to much in public, that might mean people are divided and it won't be long before we start killing each other or something.

Secondly, I think there is a kind of capital "P" religious Pluralism that motivates "Season's Greetings." All religious make people nice and happy. They all make people good. So lets all give eachother presents and have a nice "good will towards men" and cut out the messy religious dogma that we don't all agree on. Let's all agree the "God" is vague anyway.

Did I mentioned that I get annoyed at this kind of thing?

When someone is worried about division, I wonder what kind of division they talk about. When I say "Gloria in Exclesis Deo" I am not saying it with anyone except those who are already in my religious community. I am not expecting those outside to understand it. Is this divisive? I don't care. The holy day of Christmas is for Christians and by Christians. I'd rather not have anyone outside of the community offer me ways to improve my own religious devotion. I don't scorn people outside of it, but please mind your own businesses.

Additionally, I don't care much for capital "P" religious Pluralism. This is largely because I am not offended or threatened that there are people who are out there practicing religions other than my own. I am not bothered by Hannukkah or a pagan winter solstice celebration. In fact, by all means, celebrate away. I fully support little "p" pluralism: that there are several religions each with own distinctive practices and mutually exclusive claims. Why should I, a committed Christian, feel offended by other religions? Does the devotion of a winter solstice affect my ability to celebrate Christ's birth?

In truth, I think that the politically correct "let's not divide on the holiday" approach is really plain insecurity on part of those who endorse it. People either have such little devotion to their own traditions, that they are threatened by those who are deeply dedicated to different faiths. This in turn creates the need for "neutrality" in the public space because they can't handle it. It seems to want to take the life out of the faith of others because of the lack of faith on their part.

But Merry Christmas.

Anyone else annoyed with "season's greetings"?

Book Review: Jesus Made in America

Just Give me Jesus…Which Jesus?

One of the most difficult endeavors anyone can undertake is describing what “water” is to fish. Or in this case, how American culture influences Christianity to members of American cultural Christianity.

Yet this is exactly what Stephen J. Nichols accomplishes in his book Jesus Made in America.

This book is a historic survey of American Christianity. It begins with the puritans and ends with the present day. Some chapters on the past help us understand the present. Who is Jesus according to founding fathers or Jesus according to cowboys? Later, several chapters of the book are dedicated to issues relevant to the present day Christians. Who is Jesus according to the political right (and left) and who is according to Bible book stores? The book is a flowing, and fascinating read that is neither boring nor heavy on jargon. All of it is quite illuminating and challenging.

But this book is not for faint-hearted or the non-introspective. Nichols criticizes much of contemporary evangelicalism as having missed the mark on the understanding of Jesus of all matters. Not only does he tell fish what water is, he tells fish that the water is polluted. There are more than a few sacred cows (golden calves?) that Nichols wants scratch at. He even calls out a few heroes by name, including Max Lucado, Beth Moore, and James Dobson. Not even Veggie tales remains untouched!

Space does not allow me to cover every section of this book, but I there were two that hit close to home for me. The first was Christian music. Nichols points out how often Evangelicals get their theology from their songs, and their songs are sometimes –shall we say thin. Much of evangelical CCM creates and then perpetuates the cultural image of Christ that Nichols decries. There is too much emphasis on “how Jesus makes me feel,” little regard for “what Jesus has done in history,” and barely any “who Jesus is.” He even points out how close Christian lyrics are to pop love songs*, as has been satirized on South Park. At one point the Christian Contemporary music was a grass-roots, spontaneous and genuine before in turned into a money making industry that watered down its message as it tried to evangelize. This leads to the second section of the book I enjoyed: Jesus according to consumer culture.

Many Christians are often shocked when Jesus overturned money tables and chased out the lenders with a whip. Strange think is, Nichols probably believes that Jesus would do the same thing at most Bible bookstores. Jesus and consumer culture form an unhappy marriage in Nichol’s view. One of the saddest points in the book is a story of women who was not able to buy a Jesus fish for her car. She wondered who she was supposed to witness. Nichols is fair in his belief that the Holy Spirit can use anything, but the culture of T-shirts, endless mass-market books, childhood media, etc makes him wonder if this is because of or in spite of a mass-market Jesus. Yet this is the water that many people swim in. What kind of Jesus are we really looking at? Is the culture conforming to Christ or is Christ revised to fit the culture?

Even thought the book is critical, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Nichols, in the epilogue, explains that he believes evangelicalism can hit the mark. To do so, Christians must learn to look outside their own generation and pull on resources from the past. He suggests the great Creeds (while recognizing the bias they had) as a guide for evangelical Christology. He also admits that the Christology has never been an easy task, but we should never be afraid of complexity. It is our job, as Christians in the dominant west to ensure we both learn and pass on these teaching of Christ. No matter how difficult the task.

Thanks for reading. Now go read this book or see a few other interesting ones.




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*May I gently add a point to all the Christian girls/women who ask “where are all the good, single, Christian men?” this comment: please consider that men worship God differently than women do. For instance, Christian heterosexual men are generally not interested in relating to Jesus as if he is our boyfriend. We’re not interested competing with him either.

Have Yourself a very Civic Christmas

Isn't there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?! -Charlie Brown

Yesterday was the the third Sunday of Advent and I am yet to comment on Christmas.

I am such a bad Christian.

I had hoped to do a series of worked out, fully fledged, articles for this Advent season, but my school schedule, my quest for summer employment and to some extent even Christmas shopping got the better of me.

In other words, I was sucked into the civic side of Christmas.

It seems, when Christmas comes around, Christians really wind up celebrating two different holidays at the same time. One, is the secular holiday; henceforth "x-mas." X-mas is marked by the traveling stress of coming home from school during winter break, (or waiting for your kids to come home if you are the parent). It is about the big day of shopping of black Friday. It is about getting presents under the tree. Hanging stockings above the mantle. Getting gifts and receiving them, and shopping while hearing "Jingle bells" or "I'll be Home for Christmas" or something else vaguely "Good will" orientated. X-mas, is the secular, cultural, holiday that all people of any religious or non-religious persuasion can enjoy.

Do I think any of these things are bad? Not at all (except the shopping). I enjoy giving and receiving gifts. X-mas remains the one time of year when I really look forward to going home. Decorations are still fun. As long as there is not a great deal of stress, I will have a good X-mas this year.

The thing is though, I really want to celebrate Advent and Christmas during December. I want to prepare myself as if Christ was coming on December 24th. I want some time to take emotional, spiritual, and even mental inventory and redirect everything towards God. I want to show Christian charity through acts of Christian charity. I want to sing Christmas songs that reflect the importance of Christ's birth. I want to be amazed by the incarnation.

I found this Advent, and many others like it to be an unstable balance of X-mas and Christmas. It seems every year, that the aspects of X-mas, because I am so stuck in the culture, eclipse Christmas. Never fully so, obviously, but a little to much in my mind.

This year, though, I did get all my shopping done by November. Next year, I will pay special attention Advent and will hopefully be able to decorate my apartment accordingly.

Thanks for reading.

Thoughts on a Post-modern Testimony

The power of the personal testimony is valued in all ways and in all places by Evangelicalism and fundamentalism. How we answer the question “What has God done for you?” is a shillobeth for membership in either of these circles. Dramatic stories told in high school youth groups, recovery ministries, and missionary pulpits are ever flowing and ever dramatic. Good Christians, like family, are always ready to open their ears to them and give people a place to speak, share, and be understood.

At least as long as the speakers tow the party line.

It is no defective fault that Evangelicalism desires to listen to Evangelicalism. That is to say: there is nothing wrong with the fact that evangelicals are eager to hear about how other people have come to experience God through evangelicalism. Yet, I think Christian charity calls us to more than that. Can evangelicals truly listen and understand those who depart from evangelicalism for some “other” Christianity?

One such testimony comes from the Emergent Podcast. Here, the speaker A.J. stitch confesses that Emergent is the only way that he can remain a Christian after leaving a conservative, charismatic, Christian college at Asbury. This phenomen is far more common than many people realize (or admit).

For the record, I do not consider myself a member of or an advocate of the Emergent Village, but neither do I count myself as one of their detractors. What I hope though, is that everyone reading this blog will listen to this blog and give the speaker as fair of shake as they give anyone else giving an evangelical testimony. After that, here are some questions that I would love to hear you all answer on this blog.*

Questions to Ponder

Cultural and Philosophical Challenges

The story begins with a reading of “Life of Pi” and “Under the Banner of Heaven.” Both of these books provided a cultural and philosophical challenge to Christianity he was raised in. Does evangelicalism adequately understand how weird the crucifixion look to outsiders? How does one answer the apparent contradiction of God condemning Murder and then later calling for it?

Josh Harris and “Christian Courtship.”

The author described himself as “all out evangelist” for Josh Harris/Christian courtship, but later he said that this failed to address the issues of depression. How might “Christian Courtship” overcome this problem? If it is unable to, what must be done with it?

Experience versus Scripture

The speaker, at one point, mention that reading in the Bible “God will not tempt you with more than you can bear” did not quite fit with his experience and observations during a depressive period of his life. He also criticizes his own literalistic, modernist, interpretation of scripture. What was wrong in this situation? The Bible? His interpretation of it? Or his understanding of experience?

*For my Facebook friends, I’m glad you’re reading this here. There will be a lot of room for a great discussion if everyone consolidates their comments in the blog itself. If you like what’s said here, please go ahead and repost it or email it.

Thoughts on the First Season of BattleStar Gate-ica

It has finished. The first season of the dark sci-fi series: Stargate Universe has finished. I just watched the last episode and I feel compelled to blog while the show is fresh in my mind.

For the uninitiated, Stargate Universe is the latest in the the Star Gate canon (which is now the new Star Trek) and is bit of a divergence from the two previous military/exploration shows. In this series, a group of military and civilian scientists escape a battle through a gate and find themselves on spacecraft flying through space on the other side of the universe.

It seems to be a hybrid of Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and Stargate.

SGU (Stargate Universe) is a bit like Lost. The characters, those ambiguous heroes, have a troubled past that occasionally shows up one way or another. One character was raised by a drunken Catholic priest. His dark past was getting a girl pregnant at 16. Dr. Rush does not have a clean moral slate. A particular marine was released from the brig in the first episode and his dark past is yet to be revealed.

SGU is like Stargate in the fact that there is a stargate.

But SGU is really like Battlestar. It is dark and immersive. A lot of work is done with hand-held cameras. Often the camera is tilted or blurred. Much of the shots look like indie films. The general lack of soundtrack, pacing, and such give the episodes a sense of frustration and aimlessness that you imagine all the characters are likely feeling. The grit of the spaceship is much like Galactica as well and is a far cry from the technologically pristine Atlantis.

Like BSG, the show is full of dark characters and dark times. Dr. Rush's motivations are never known from the beginning of the series. More than once, he clashes with ship's military officer who does not trust him. While on the ship, we see the characters, civilians and military, struggle to create a political society in which economic, social, and survival needs are all met. This climaxes in the last episode with the court scene, but I won't ruin that for you.

Of course, it is easy to see how this show make take a few to many pages from the Battlestar book. Dr. Rush, if even for superficial reasons, is a little to much like Dr. Baltar. Likewise, I keep seeing Lee Adama in one of the lieutenants. This is certainly not enough reason to write off the series, but viewers should be aware of this if they are put off of it easily.

Of course, it is not as dark as Battle star, but it did just finish its first season.

As a Stargate fan, I think this is worth seeing. If you like Lost, Stargate, and Battlestar you will probably enjoy this nice hybrid.

Why I Prefer Preterism

I meant what I said when I wrote that I don’t want my blog to be excessively negative. The last post, on my frustrations with dispensational futurism, was quite deconstructive. In this post, I’ll be positive instead. I will explain why I prefer preterism.

I realize that many people reading this have probably never heard of preterism. It is fairly new to me too. Briefly put, preterism is the view that many of the prophecies in Revelation and the Olivet discourse were fulfilled by the end of the first century. More information can be found a The Preterist Site or you can listen to the Preterist Podcast if you (like the Podcast's author) are a Mac loyalist, or at least own an iPod.

As a caveat, I reiterate that I am relatively new to preterism. I missed the “Biblical Apocalyptic” class at Azusa Pacific. Eschatology in general is not my area of expertise. Additionally, I would like to make it clear that I support orthodox preterism. What this means is that I reject the kind of preterism that denies a future bodily resurrection among other essentials to the Christian faith. I find that there are those who automatically equate preterism with heresy. I hope that those reading this won’t have such a knee jerk reaction.

Here goes:

Preterism understands literal and temporal context well. If there is one fundamental reason why I like preterism, it is the fact that I never scratch my head and wonder why preterists believe what they believe. Preterists know what their hermeneutic is and they understand how it is distinct from actually interpreting the bible. N.T. Wright, who is often invoked by pretestists, spends a whole four-hundred page volume explaining his method before he proceeds to exegete the Gospels in later works. I know his assumptions, he knows his assumptions, and consequently I understand him when he gets into the story of Christ’s ministry.

Preterists, when commenting on things like the Olivet discourse or revelation are upfront with their hermeneutic and I see that. For instance, when reading through Jesus’ words at Olivet they rightly point out that condemnation of the Jewish Apostates was a major theme in Matthew, and they understand Olivet in that light. Preterists then, look to the surrounding literally context of a passage to get to an understanding of what that passage is talking about.

Preterists also get deep into the time period of when a passage is written. First, they rightly assume that when Jesus was talking about things happening “soon” and when he refers to “this generation” they ought to be understood as if they were written to another audience, in another time, and in another place –because they were (in fact!) written to another audience, in another time, and in another place.

Literal and temporal context are imminently basic to any hermeneutic of anything. Yet it seems to me the preterists are the only ones applying it to scripture.

Preterism is consistent when it comes to cultural idiom and genre. Idiom and genre are other important aspects of interpretation that preterists have a firm grasp on. Most people agree that there are plenty of idioms in the Bible. When Jesus says in Luke 14:26 that the disciples must hate their family and their own lives, most people will agree that Jesus did not want us to be hateful, but recognize that Jesus was using a cultural idiom for choosing between two alternatives. (“I love this, and I hate that.” Was a way of saying “I choose this.”). Likewise, genre is something that nobody wants to ignore. The parables of Jesus are understood in the way they are because we know their genre. We know this, and how they were understood, because lots of other people in that era spoke in parables. So we come to understand genre by comparing what the Bible contains with similar literature from the era the Bible was written in.

When preterists read phrases like “the moon will not shed its light” and “coming on the clouds” and even “[violence/tribulation] never to be equaled again” they are fully aware of the idioms and hyperbole of Jesus or whoever else might be speaking. Likewise, when looking at Ezekiel, Daniel, or Revelation I have noticed that preterists are also aware of the genre of apocalyptic literature, which they glean from other sources just like the non-biblical parables. From this, they learn to look at Revelation in a way the author likely intended.

Preterism makes the Good News sound like “Good News.” There is another thing that I’ve noticed about preterism, that may not be essential to it, but often goes hand and hand: the idea that the Kingdom of God was initiated with the coming of Jesus and continues to this day.

This is some serious good news! The idea that the Kingdom of God is a way of life, a political order, and/or liberation of the oppressed etc deserves an entire blog. Preterists take it as a given and often articulate that God has been growing the Kingdom of God like a muster seed since its inception in the time of Jesus. There is also an assumption that waiting for Christ’s coming is preparing the world for him to come. This is like how you would clean up your house for an honored guest. The Church, then, works in the world to make the world better. When preterists say, “The Kingdom of God is at hand” they mean things like “We intend to liberate slaves” rather than “Christians are going to disappear and the planet will pretty much literally go to hell.”

All Hail Dee Dee Warren!

I think that those three reasons are only the beginning of why I am attracted to preterism. It really boils down to one thing; even before I knew there was something besides dispensational futurism (yes, I was eye-ball deep in a church that believes it), I learned the basics of hermerneutics. When I listen to the preterists, I hear them appealing to, understanding, and applying the principles I learned. Because of this, I simply trust them a lot more than others. Additionally, the idea of end times being about regenerating and providing hope for the world is an eschatology I am instinctively drawn to.

So color me an Orthodox preterist. It was inevitable after leaving Azusa Pacific anyway.